"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

“I want people to understand that this is not over,” President Barack Obama said Sunday evening from Washington. “The impacts of this storm will be felt for some time, and the recovery effort will last for weeks or longer.”

It was raining in Manhattan on Sunday morning, and the dogged correspondents in their brightly colored windbreakers were getting wet.
But the apocalypse that cable television had been trumpeting had failed to materialize. And at 9 a.m., you could almost hear the air come out of the media’s hot-air balloon of constant coverage when Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm.
Not everyone was willing to accept this turn of events. When the Weather Channel’s Brian Norcross told MSNBC that forecasters had been expecting the first hurricane to make landfall in New York City since 1893 — “and it didn’t happen” — anchor Alex Witt was openly skeptical.
“Really, Brian?” she asked. Hadn’t Irene technically still been a hurricane when it came ashore in New York an hour earlier? “Can’t we still go with that?”
No, Norcross said.

Now do you see what all that TV hurricane hype was about? Global warming causes a hurricane to hit New York City — a horrific, historic disaster — and then Obama triumphantly leads the relief effort. It was a Hollywood-perfect narrative arc.

The three-day count of deaths related to the storm rose to at least 16 in six states . . .

The category “storm-related deaths” is quite flexible — at least one of them was a guy who had a heart attack while working to nail boards over his windows. And then there was that Florida surfer . . .

Well, dead is dead. But 16 deaths? Every year, more than 30,000 Americans are killed in auto accidents — nearly 100 a day on average. And the world-historic cataclysm requiring a “recovery effort [that] will last for weeks or longer”? Give me a freaking break.

Comments

Anonymous

The interior to the coast flooding will probably be the worst of it for the area from Philly north. Also the damage to the NC barrier islands is probably more than OMG NY is danger coverage has so far indicated.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

Well, Boy Howdy! I just want to say I, for the first time in my life, felt safe when Obama confidently strode into the Hurricane Emergency Center or The War Room or Studio 3-D or whatever they call that made-for-TV set-up this week, cast off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and took charge.

Of course he didn’t actually DO anything except pose with a concerned look and furrowed brow as various actors pretended to give him updates for the photo-op, because they don’t get the Weather Channel in the White House, but he was THERE, dammit, leading or something that looks a lot like he imagines leading would have looked like if he had ever been close enough to see it.

He even had his own seat at the table, and one of those nameplates to make sure nobody sat in his chair or ate his waffle. It read:

“Barack Obama
President of the United States”

which was very impressive that they had a place for him on the set and his nameplate done, because there were probably lots of people busily working on watching the Weather Channel and checking the internet who didn’t have any idea who the clown was who kept getting in their way.

“We, uh, will fight Irene on the beaches, uh, we will fight, we will Irene in the, uh, fields, and let me be perfectly clear, we will fight Irene in the, uh, streets, even if it never shows up! Tea Party Obstructionists!”

mojo

Gotta love it when the East Coasters get into full-on “poor poor pitiful me” mode, don’t ya?

Cowboy up, ya sissies.

https://plus.google.com/114041580398058374552/posts McGehee

Wait — “not over”?

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Anonymous

I drove up from Charlotte to Allentown, PA on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I can say that it was no picnic out there. Those flashes in the sky weren’t lightning, but rather exploding electrical transformers, most especially when they produced a green flash.

Perhaps the answer to the overhyped charge is that NYC is, in fact, a large “black hole” that sucks in everything, including hurricanes.

But ultimately, Hurricane Irene (from the perspective of NYC) is the perfect metaphor for Barack Obama … lots of hype, followed by failure to perform, laying waste to everybody else on the way there.